Endgame: Creeping to Victory

A couple more landslide victories like the one Hillary Clinton scored in
Puerto Rico over the weekend, and all would have been lost. Because even if
she collected the lion's share of the delegates at stake, Barack Obama
picked up just enough of them to inch him closer to victory. No longer a
sprint, his campaign has become a slog.

Even an undramatic victory is still a victory. In Puerto Rico, for example,
Miss Hillary's blow-out - she got 68 percent of the popular vote compared to
her rival's 32 percent - netted her 38 delegates while Barack Obama picked
up only 17. But that was enough to leave him only 47 short of the now magic
number: 2,118.

Barack Obama could have lost Tuesday's primaries in both Montana and South
Dakota, and still come out with enough elected delegates to persuade enough
unelected superdelegates finally, finally to put him over the top. In short,
the more Hillary Clinton won, the more she lost.

The Obama campaign was already putting out the word that now is the time for
superdelegates to get behind his lumbering bandwagon, however much it's
slowed down, and provide the final push across the finish line - if they
expect to get any of the goodies. Or as a less than subtle e-mail from Obama
Central to the superdelegates put it: "A number of people have reported that
various members intend to endorse after the last
primary. Those members need to understand that they won't get any visibility
from that." Principle, shminciple, what counts is Visibility - which must be
the latest euphemism for patronage and pull.

For Barack Obama, the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is
ending not with a bang but a whimper. He's preparing not for a victory lap
but just a trudge across the finish line. How different from his streak of
wins back in the spring, when he was still Mr. Wonderful. Now he's running
less on momentum than inertia.

If and when this young but no longer glamorous senator gets that final
delegate, of course he'll celebrate it with all the fanfare he can drum up.
But it just won't be the same. For the bright shining star has become a
slowly collapsing one. At this point, it may be all over but the forced
smiles, the joint poses and ritual incantations of party unity. The magic's
gone. Routine has set in.

For Barack Obama, it's been a long year's journey to anticlimax - the result
of a front-loaded system out of sync with ever fluid public opinion. It is
not a satisfying system, or much of a system at all when you throw in split
delegations, elections that may or may not count, rigged rules, and the
final decision being made by superdelegates who were never elected
themselves.

What a contrast with the way presidential campaigns were once decided, with
one ever more decisive primary following another to a grand climax - from
little New Hampshire in February to crucial California in June.

Instead, this year's Democratic presidential nomination may have been
largely decided before much of the electorate had a chance to see how each
candidate reacted under the pressures of a long campaign with all its
unforeseeable developments.